A Question For Atheists.

Please do your best to respond to this post. I won't insult you if you don't insult me.

Cause and effect. How can something come out of nothing? How could the very first thing that happened to start the universe not be effected by anything? It has to go back and back and back until one thing that effected something without being caused. That, I believe, was a god. Can somebody please prove this point wrong?

Replies to This Discussion

The Casimir effect is proven and measurable. Caused by putting to metal plates so close together that virtual particles aren't created between them, so the pressure from the other side pushes the plates together

It's not what happen with the Big Bang, but things can indeed come from seemingly "nothing"

The particles pop into existence because existence is not an absolute value; it is a relative value. The emergence of matter and energy at random are the result of this. It is observed on small scales because at those small scales the relationship between that region of space and the observer becomes more tenuous as it is more difficult to observe/interacts less. On the larger scales it is collectively referred to as dark matter and dark energy (although to quantum theory, there is nothing "dark" about it at all. It is just matter and energy in a quasi state of existence).

This is why you shouldn't even bother trying to posit scientific hypotheses for the origins of the universe to religious people who make the existence proves god argument. Unless and until we can truly explain it with a consensus scientific theory that has been around for a while, all efforts will be met with the type of squirming, endless regression arguments that you are trying to counter here, Nelson. Though I admire the clarity of your thoughts and prose, your efforts are wasted.

I think it is much better, for now, to point out that no ones knows the answer to the question and that claiming to know, as the religious do, should be grounds for losing one's credibility. Only a liar, a fool, or a madman would claim to know the answer to that question.

To argue that an undefined god can be the starting point at the beginning of this chain is not useful. A god with no definition, no attributes, no character, no form, no description whatsoever is—what did Jefferson call many Christian tokens?—a nothing. Since the premise of the argument requires that something cannot come from nothing, the argument automatically contradicts itself in this form. A completely definition-less template god is itself nothing, but also if god was not nothing, he would be a something which according to the argument needs a creator. In other words, this argument fails whether somebody provides or implies a specific god or not.

Forces which are not beings can be categorized as such, but then these are principles and mechanics, not beings. A being described as "spaceless" or "immaterial", i.e. something which has never been observed, as far as I'm concerned is nothing. Feel free to argue that something as in a force or principle was necessary for the current state of the universe, but the idea that a being was necessary for anything continues to be disposable, imo.

since all of material reality began with the universe.

This is a baseless assumption.

Uncaused since it is the first cause.

The first cause requires the baseless assumption that "the cause" is the first cause, that the universe is the first thing caused, and the arbitrary rule that "uncaused" beings can exist yet "uncaused" principles, energy and matter (or the naturally caused organization of them) cannot exist.

Unimaginably powerful, since it brought into existence the whole material universe.

Only relative to human understanding. Gravity has such an effect, yet there is no reason to believe that gravity, just because it has an effect, is a being.

The science is not having answer for all the universe mysteries, but day by day, all the great minds in this world are discovering new things that solves new mystery or takings us one step closer to solving mysteries. one very good example is recent finding of the new sub atomic particles in the LHC. Scientists are hoping that these particles will help them to understand the universe better.
So one day science will be able to answer all the questions about universe.
Now could you prove scientificaly god exists? What kind of particles is he/she/it made of? Is the earth created as tailor made for human beings to live or we evolved as human beings here...